In today’s Wall Street Journal column William McGurn makes a compelling argument that the concept of objectivity is ancient history among the major news media outlets.
McGurn notes that most of the press has failed to press Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on the authenticity of the emails reportedly found on his son Hunter’s abandoned laptop.
“The elder Mr. Biden dismisses it all as Russian disinformation, though both the director of National Intelligence and the Federal Bureau of Investigation say there’s no evidence for that,” the column states. “Specifically, Mr. Biden has yet to say that the emails are phony and the laptop isn’t his son’s. Then again, he has never had to say that because the media won’t press him on it.”
Noting that the New York Post news stories on this topic were also suppressed on Twitter and Facebook, McGurn suggests, “The rationale appears to be that Mr. Biden can’t handle the questions and the American people can’t be trusted to handle the answers.”
One of the more obvious examples of what the columnist calls the “see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil approach” to Biden is illustrated by how the New York Times handled former Biden Senate staffer Tara Reade’s claim she was sexually accosted by Biden in 1993. When a woman accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of participating in gang rapes at high-school parties, the Times run the story on the same day it came out even though there was no corroboration. Reade’s accusation was not reported for 19 days.
McGurn also points out the slow pitch softball question Biden got from a magazine reporter about anonymous claims that President Trump disparaged dead American soldiers. “When you hear these remarks — ‘suckers,’ ‘losers,’ ‘recoiling from amputees,’ what does that tell you about President Trump’s soul and the life he leads?” Biden was asked.
McGurn concludes:
The best summary of the new standard in election coverage was given by Mark Hemingway of RealClearInvestigations. After a particularly fawning news conference, he relayed the assessment of a friend: Watching the press handle Joe Biden is “like watching someone make sure a 3 year old wins Candyland.”
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